Busy in Eorzea

So Final Fantasy XIV is a subscription game. By design, the developers want us, the players, to take time achieving our goals. But also, and i like this side of the equation, they want us to have many goals to aim for. I’m really a lowlevel player, bein level 23 with my Arcanist, but i have so much stuff to do. The most annoying part, i have to confess, is travelling back and forth for the different quests. So here’s what i’m doing at the moment.

Get a chocobo

If i had one other problem with FFXIV, it would be the sometimes so very much apparent candy-cuteness, like with the “mounts” they use.

The standard “mount” in Eorzea

I guess it’s a matter of tastes, but i don’t really like riding around on a chicken. But there are other mounts available, as well, so i’ll see to that when i have gained access.

As with so many things in Final Fantasy XIV, you’ll have to unlock the ability to ride while doing story missions- after choosing your grand company, one of the first quests they’ll assign to you is to get a chocobo. You’ll need to get 2000 seals, though, to buy some writ from your grand company shop. 2000 seals doesn’t sound much, but it is. Or maybe it’s just because i’m so low level in everything. You can do different things to get these seals- i hear you could just do Fates, but what i’m doing is- i’ll get out to the first grand company levemete (?), get two duties, which are basically just-for-you-quests in the open world, each one good for maybe 250 seals.

Then i look at the crafting and gathering missions that grant seals. Right now, i’m able to accept one for every crafting and gathering job i began with my character, and while the crafting experience these missions grant are very good, i’ll only receive about 200 seals for doing three of these quests. So i’ve been doing that for the last 3 sessions in game.

Crafting

Which leads me to this: so i can take a mission for every crafting and gathering profession i have? Why didn’t i begin all of them in the first place? What i’m doing now is to get into every crafting guild the moment i encounter it. I mean, i’m interested in crafting, anyway, so where’s the harm, right?

Also, since you unlock the crafting professions while doing story missions, you are behind in your first choices. Basically, you’ll be level 12 or 13 when you are able to pick up crafting- and then you’ll have to play catch up. My highest crafting-related profession is the Botanist, and it’s level 19. So there is a slight problem in that i can’t craft very useful stuff for myself, because i lack crafting experience.

As i’m sure i’ll try out different classes at one time (Monk, Archer, Bard, for instance), i want to give the other professions at least a little headway. So i’m going to pick up all crafting-related classes in the next few days, because i’ll be in every capital anyway.

Good times ahead

The Barber

And that’s because there’s a quest to unlock a barber shop in the game, where you can change pretty much everything appearance-wise, except race/gender, of course. This quest begins in Limsa Lominsa and sends me to all three capitals, and i’m not really sure it’s finished after that.

Storyline

Also, of course, i want to follow the story line to make these quests as high in level as i am- right now, my story quest is still for level 20 characters. I haven’t done any quests besides these, what’s mentioned above and some crafting since “returning” (realizing i still have a sub) to Final Fantasy XIV, but the missions have only gained one level.

There’s just so much

When Final Fantasy XIV re-released, many people were complaining that there are few ways to level your character. Quests can only be taken once, after all, so what i read was that you’d get one profession to maxlevel and the second one would have to do Fates, all the time. Maybe that was true then, but it’s very different now.

I do like when there’s stuff behind quests, when you unlock something, explore something and all that. But it doesn’t really mix with the way i level right now- for instance, i avoid doing quests, because i want to keep them for later classes. But that could mean i miss out on some hidden feature until i discover the related quest.

All in all, it’s a great game and i’m looking forward to the next dungeon, the day my crafting professions catch up and the day i will accept normal quests again.

Why i like Final Fantasy XIV

So, my plan’s not going so well- i didn’t have time to play on any day this week. Well, i managed to get a story mission in Guild Wars 2 in, but that’s all i got. I really need to get going in Final Fantasy XIV, though. In light of my obsession to play every MMO out there, i mapped out a series, of sorts- telling some reasons why i like the games i do or don’t play at any given moment. I’ll try and make it a list of 5, every time. So let’s begin with Final Fantasy XIV

Why Final Fantasy XIV is a great MMO

1. The crafting

In many games, crafting is little more than a useless hobby someone might enjoy who likes the idea of “downtime”. In Final Fantasy XIV, crafting is quite involved- it’s not just a queue where you put items in that you want to craft- you have to participate in the progress, raising your chances to get a high quality item (and experience), research where to gather stuff you need, playing the market and there’s even quests to do for crafting. Also, you can follow any crafting job you want with one character, while the process still is quite social in the sense that you’ll have to buy materials off the market- at least when you don’t have much free time, because raising every gathering/crafting profession is quite time-consuming. There’s a lot of interdependancy involved- you’ll need your leatherworkers for tailoring, for example. The crafting in Final Fantasy XIV is a levelling and gameplay experience all by itself.

Hanging out

2. The community

Final Fantasy XIV’s community is one of the nicest places i’ve seen in MMOs. Chat is generally quite polite and helpful and at least i haven’t run into many unfriendly PUGs (there was just one guy), although i’ve heard the dungeon finder groups can be quite elitist, as well. Still, what i found, was very friendly indeed.

3. No Alts necessary

If you provide me with options, i’m going to make use of them. If there are 8 classes in an MMO, chances are that i have one character in all of them while the highest character still is under level 30. In Final Fantasy XIV, changing classes is as easy as changing equipment, and you can do everything with just one character. So while the outcome might be the same in short term, no progress will ever be “wasted” because i’ll somehow never get back to a class. It will be there, waiting for the next time i want Deidra to be something else or want to change up my game experience.

4. A lot of options in levelling content

I know many will see this as the opposite, because you are only able to do each quest once, but as of now, i feel there are a lot of options to level your character in Final Fantasy XIV. There’s the normal questing, of course, and then there are repeatable tasks that are called leves- you’ll get an allowance of doing 8 per day which stacks up to 100, and this is sometimes too low if you play a lot, but for me- i’m almost always at 100 when logging in. Then you have FATEs, which are basically Rifts of Rift or Anchors of TESO, the Dungeons, of course, and Scenarios, which are quite short, instanced, group fights. And that’s just for the adventuring classes. The gathering and crafting jobs have their own quests and leves. There really is a lot of variety.

Limsa Lominsa by night

5. Updates

I feel Final Fantasy XIV deserves the subscription money they get- they’ll release new content in a three-month-cadence and there’ll be an expansion, soon. While most of the updates are not meant for me, since i’m still quite early in the game, i watch from afar, but still, there aren’t a lot of MMOs who put out that much content in the same timeframe.

Is the subscription coming back?

The sub is dead

This is what we keep hearing for quite some time by now. MMORPGs released with a subscription but went free-to-play faster with every year- when we look at the games that made the transition, we have

• City of heroes (88 months as a sub game, 13 months as free-to-play)
  • Release: April 2004
  • F2P: September 2011
  • Closure: November 2012
• Everquest 2 (68/84 months as a sub game)
  • Release: November 2004
  • F2P: July 2010 (EQ2X), November 2011 (free-to-play)
• Dungeons & Dragons Online (42 months as a sub game)
  • Release: February 2006
  • F2P: September 2009
• Vanguard (67 months as a sub game)
  • Release: January 2007
  • F2P: August 2012
• Lord of the Rings Online (40 months as a sub game)
  • Release: April 2007
  • F2P: September 2010
• Age of Conan (37 months as a sub game)
  • Release: May 2008
  • F2P: June 2011
• Champions Online (15 months as a sub game)
  • Release: September 2009
  • F2P: January 2011
• Aion (16/18 months as a sub game)
  • Release: September 2009
  • F2P: February 2011 (Europe), April 2011 (North America)
• Star Trek Online (23 months as a sub game)
  • Release: February 2010
  • F2P: January 2012
• Rift (27 months as a sub game)
  • Release: March 2011
  • F2P: June 2013
• Star Wars: the old republic (11 months as a sub game)
  • Release: December 2011
  • F2P: November 2012
• The Secret World (5 months as a sub game)
  • Release: July 2012
  • B2P: December 2012

The trend is obvious. But we should not forget that this is incomplete data- these are only the games that transitioned from pay-to-play to free-to-play or buy-to-play. There’s no EVE, Final Fantasy XI, FF XIV 1.0, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online etc. And furthermore, these are only the games i consider- one could add games like APB, Hellgate and Fallen Earth, as well.

Still, it looks like subscription games transition to free- or buy-to-play quickly these days. When you consider ArcheAge – released in January 2013, free-to-play in July 2013 in Korea, there’s another game that didn’t even make 6 months as a subscription game.

Players being cautious of buying subscription games in my opinion is about as much a result of this as it is the unwillingness to pay a sub. If you bought TSW on release and subscribed those 5 months until it went buy-to-play, you spent 125€ (167$) up to that point- and then it went buy-to-play for 30€ (40$). When you did the same in SWTOR, you’d have paid about 190€ (250$) until it went free-to-play, although with SWTOR, the free-to-play option is so bad that a subscription is basically still the best way to play if you do so regularly.

So when you hear “i’ll wait for f2p”, that’s really just a result of past experience, because players don’t question if a game goes free-to-play anymore, they ask themselves when it’s going to happen. And whether it’s more viable just to wait for it to happen. I think it’s unfair to judge these players- maybe they feel betrayed with one of the last transitions.

Now, while i don’t feel betrayed- i made a choice, fully aware about the risk, my own gaming habits and so on- but i spent 250€ (335$ or was it 300€/402$?) on The Secret World- i bought the game and a Grand Master Pack. I do think Funcom made it still worth somehow, but the main reason for me buying the Grand Master Pack was so that i’ll have access to a sub-based game when i wanted to have access- instead of asking myself whether it’s worth to spend 15$ when i’d like to play TSW one evening/weekend. But the access is not restricted anymore, so….yeah.

Long live the sub

I’d really like to see the sub return- for one, i think it’s very good if players really have a choice- devs and “media” alike spin the free-to-play-phase of online gaming as being full of options, but in reality, when i don’t want to see an ingame store in my themepark MMO i’m out of options- except for Warhammer Online. Soon we’ll be able to add FF14 ARR to that list, and considering that the main market for this game is in Japan and free-to-play is not really big there, we can assume FF14 is going to stay sub based.

Then there’ll come Wildstar and TESO (probably), maybe ArcheAge. And it could work- it could even work well, if the devs and publishers finally stopped chasing World of Warcraft. When the devs stop pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the development of one game and stop expecting and/or trying to get millions of subscribers. When they know there’ll be a dip in player population and aren’t afraid to go and build up from there. And when they stick to their business model. Nobody’s waiting for EVE to go free-to-play, and that’s because it’s not likely to happen.

The rise and fall of free-to-play

It’s been predicted elsewhere, the impending doom for this payment model- and i tend to agree somehow. Going free-to-play used to be some kind of second chance and the numbers reported from the games that underwent the transition early after going f2p are always quite high- they double the subscriptions, quadruple the logins, triple revenue. But after some time, there’s always silence. I don’t think this is because the games are losing money 6 months after the transition, i think it might be because the numbers are getting more complicated- maybe the player counts are the same as before the transition, but the average of money spent in game has gone up. Or maybe it’s because player numbers and revenue went down compared to when the game in question was a sub game.

It’s odd, i can remember Daglar (from Rift) being in a podcast shortly after Rift went f2p. He said the numbers are way higher than they expected but he didn’t want to share those because the marketing departement was preparing an announcement regarding numbers and he didn’t want to spoil it. Funny enough, we still didn’t hear those numbers, the news of yesterday coming closest- and this is literally one sentence, without numbers.

I think we’ll see that free-to-play is not the saviour of MMORPGs in this or the coming year, when closures will begin to happen. Free-to-play used to be an USP, but now that everyone is f2p, it’s not anymore. One could argue that p2p is becoming a new USP, but those who use it that way should be aware that this is a pro-argument only for a minority nowadays.

Time to play

Funny enough, i think players like me are the problem here- and that’s one reason why i’d like to change my behaviour- when you look at the daily grind from massively where they asked how much time people spend daily on MMORPGs, i was surprised to see that many answered along the lines of “not as much as i used to” and “about 1-3 hours a day”. In the announcement article of Wildstars business model (many comments there), some commentors expressed their dislike for the sub model by saying that they played too many games to justify a sub for one game.

Combine these two statements- less total time spent in more games- and there’s the answer for MMORPG design these days. It’s not the devs, it’s us. Now, if we are happy with that, there’s no need to change anything. If we’d like to see the design philosophy of MMORPGs shift again, and many of us are looking for that one game that grabs their attention for years, we need to make a conscious decision that we want that kind of game- and stop worrying for the others.

We shouldn’t complain if MMORPGs are getting shallower with time, are experienced quicker, stop adding “meaningful” content (whatever this is to you) when we hop around in games like bunnies- when we make schedules regarding what game to play on what weekday. Of course developers will adapt to our behaviour, and some will even put it to good use, just like Arenanet does with Guild Wars 2. With their biweekly-living-story update, their game is in the news all the time. Players like me read those news and begin thinking that they’ll miss something when they don’t log in and get the impression that there’s something going on all the time. GW2 has a good chance to get those casuals to log in at least on a biweekly basis. And the game’s perfect for that, there’s no sub fee, there’s only one toolbar and almost no text in the game. There’s no need to “catch up” to what you were doing last time, you can just go ahead.

I think, this shift in design might have opened up a niche: the game for players that only want to play one game- if the game in question can be that, the players won’t have any problem paying for a subscription again. And sub games have one advantage: nowadays it’s really refreshing to enter a game where you can unlock bank space without seeing any sign of being able to do so with a real money investment.

Conclusion

The subscription could be coming back- when the game in question is designed in a way to encourage a dedicated, longterm stay and the developer is aware that many will buy their game, some will try and “defeat” the game in 30 days, some will sub for one or three months after the initial 30 days of game time, many subs will be lost after 6 months and they are willing to build up from there instead of the number of sales and if they target their market well and stick to their design philosophy, there’s a good chance the subscription system can work.

And, i think it would help a sub game greatly if they remove the upfront cost of buying the game. EVE is 20€ when you start playing- that’s 5€ for the client/account and 15€ for a one-month sub. I think this is a good way to go- charge a sub, but give the client out for (almost) nothing.

If Wildstar or TESO will mark the return of the sub into MMORP gaming remains to be seen, though.